Atari announces Race Pro

[Flawless]

Looks like it will now release in January.

Eurogamer

Quote:

Atari plans to unleash RACE Pro on Xbox 360 in January, and to offer a demo sometime before Christmas.

[Flawless]

[lnin0]

YEAH BABY!

[Flawless]

EDGE: A Race Pro For the Rest of Us

Quote:

With Race Pro, Simbin takes up the mantle recently abandoned by Codemasters in its Race Driver series, shooting for breadth as well as depth. The garage may be stocked almost exclusively with race-prepared vehicles, but they range from near-standard Mini Coopers to fragile, frightening openwheeled Formula cars – a performance curve that encompasses some 800 brake horsepower (see ‘Torque sport’). Of course, the studio’s primary hope is to broadside the console audience by furnishing each vehicle with a physics model far more sophisticated and plausible than anything players have been exposed to before, and one that’s directly comparable to real racing. “Many professional drivers use our games,” claims Henrik Roos, Simbin CEO and former GT racer in a Dodge Viper, no less. “One of the Swedish Touring Car Championship drivers was not so familiar with the Anderstorp circuit, so he used our game to try and find a new line. He went there, used his new line, took pole position and won both races.” The obsession with authenticity is a rich seam that runs through every element of the Race Pro preview code we’ve seen. Name another developer that takes the time to texture the untidy globs of welding on an exposed section of rollcage, for example. It’s endemic of a passionate team pulling in a single direction, with little in the way of external pressure or responsibility beyond its own ideals. “Simbin has a philosophy that we should finance our own games,” Roos explains. “We take the publisher in at a very late stage, because otherwise they try to manipulate us and tell us what to do and so on. We like to have freedom to create what we believe in, and that’s that reality is more fun than fantasy. Other games give points for sliding or hitting things, but we think to drive a Saleen S7 on the straight and to see and hear the vibrations is fun enough.” Of course, the traditional criticism leveled at all flavours of vehicle simulation is that they’ll require proficiency equal to that of a professional pilot to operate, something that Roos refutes emphatically: “It’s not going to be more difficult to drive than Project Gotham or Forza Motorsport – we’ve tried those games. This is what journalists always write, but we hope that when you have a review version, you will find out that it’s not more difficult than any other game, but that it is more challenging in the end.” Currently the control system is ‘pre-beta’, and not implemented to a level at which we could ascertain the validity of that claim, but Simbin was able to demonstrate the presence of a number of customisable driver aids, which should soften the challenge for initiates. In addition, handling difficulty, class of vehicle and AI difficulty are all separately modifiable options, meaning a blended, user-defined challenge should, in theory, be achievable. The most accurate barometer will no doubt be the confirmed Xbox Live demo, and Roos cites this as crucial in showing Race Pro’s accessibility in comparison to more established console titles. Perhaps the game’s most surprising turn, given the scale of the operation, is that the bespoke Lizard Engine passes visual muster. While Codemasters’ Grid maintains a narrow edge in overall aesthetic, Race Pro’s art direction, rather predictably, dispenses with extraneous graphical finery in favour of more subtle effects. That’s not to say there aren’t flourishes, and the sun’s reflection on rubberised portions of the racing line, for example, demonstrates a measured and natural approach to making the often topographically barren circuits engaging. It seems that, an aborted first attempt with THQ notwithstanding, Simbin may benefit from extremely fortuitous timing for its console debut. With Turn 10 quiet about its next project, and Bizarre Creations working on an as-yet-unannounced title for Activision, the Christmas period appears open for the developer to make its unique mark on Xbox 360. As is so often the case in motorsport, there’s no question that a small independent team would struggle in direct competition with the sheer scale of manufacturer-backed projects. Given console players’ long-exploited taste for authentic racing titles, though, Simbin’s unswerving faith in its purist approach to replicating reality may yet see this particular underdog richly rewarded.

[Flamehead]

"We like to have freedom to create what we believe in, and that’s that reality is more fun than fantasy. Other games give points for sliding or hitting things, but we think to drive a Saleen S7 on the straight and to see and hear the vibrations is fun enough."

Oh heck yeah. Finally, a development team that speaks my language.

[BIG CAROLINA]

This is a day 1 purchase for me.I can finally stop playing this on my 19 inch PC screen.

[lnin0]

This statement is so true -

"With Race Pro, Simbin takes up the mantle recently abandoned by Codemasters in its Race Driver series"

I only hope the sales of Race Pro rape that of GRID and DiRT put together so maybe someone at Codemasters will smarten up before the fup the F1 license to hell and back.

[Flamehead]

Quote: Originally Posted by lnin0

This statement is so true - "With Race Pro, Simbin takes up the mantle recently abandoned by Codemasters in its Race Driver series" I only hope the sales of Race Pro rape that of GRID and DiRT put together so maybe someone at Codemasters will smarten up before the fup the F1 license to hell and back.

Preach on Brother.

[Flawless]

GameSpot Hands-On

Quote:

From a development standpoint, RacePro's mixture of approachability and demanding realism called for a brand-new game engine, codenamed "Lizard," to be built for the console. Although the game is still in development, and the preview build that we played had some rough edges (namely in the unstable frame rate), there are some important high points that improve on what SimBin fans have come to expect on the PC. Take track surfaces, for example. As Sartori put it, track deformations have been significantly improved in RacePro. You need only drive a single lap at a track like Brno--a constantly changing, engrossingly challenging track in the Czech Republic--for proof. When entering and exiting certain corners--turns that we've experienced many times in other console games--we were shocked by the amount of undulations threatening to upset the balance of our car. And the more powerful the ride, the more obvious each and every bump becomes. As Sartori put it, that extra attention to track surface detail will play a big role in determining how you want to attack any course in the game. Now, of course, every track is different. Sartori describes Brno as a track in which every corner is connected--and a mistake on one turn will have ramifications on upcoming corners, if not the entire lap. Other courses in the game, such as Italy's Monza and Brazil's Curitiba, have a little more room for error yet are still, in their own ways, lots of fun to drive. To help you make the most of your laps, a color-coded racing-line feature can be turned on or off. Although the feature itself has become a racing staple over the years, we were interested in learning why the developers at SimBin went with a static racing line, as opposed to the dynamic line featured in Forza Motorsport 2. As Sartori put it, there's something to be said for a line that shows you the optimal line around a track, not just one that helps you get out of trouble if you make a mistake in braking or accelerating.

[Kruza]

Great read. It appears that the crew at SimBin are seriously taking elevation changes and undulations of a track into account when factoring the handling physics of the car for Race Pro. Hopefully blind corners and obstructed visibility of the road ahead due to a hill/crest are also present whenever racing in helmet camera view. It also help matters that Brno and Monza are two of my favorite tracks to race on too.

Kruza